Analysis. The latest example is November 21st. That day, unions, student and Indian movements, opposition parties and Colombian peace advocates called for protests against a labor law and pension reform bill. The spark has turned into a giant fire. In a few hours, several hundred thousand people have invaded the streets of the country, conspiring the political elites in a kind of gigantic fed up. As if this country, so austere as usual, had become in turn a mirror of Latin America, one of the cauldrons of a continent already in full boiling.
To each country its contagion. Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela: the waves of protest parade according to the demands and answers or blockages of the authorities. At first sight, it is obviously difficult to give a single explanation to these unpublished social convulsions. The circumstances are different, the national contexts eminently singular. It prevents. The Latin American countries each give a similar backdrop: a global economic slowdown, an increase in social inequalities and a crisis in the political system.
In fact, they share long-standing structural problems. Already in 2001 and 2002, the economic and social crisis had pushed millions of Argentines to the pound. In 2011, tens of thousands of Chilean students demanded better access to education. Two years later, the Brazilians rose against the increase in public transport fares and the mismanagement of the works for the Football World Cup and the upcoming Olympic Games. But, each time, the propagation of the movements was contained by the repressive apparatus of the State or cosmetic measures intended to calm the protesters, or both.
Left or right-wing populisms
In the Mexican and Brazilian cases, the crisis has found a way out in a left-wing populism for one, and far-right for the other. In Argentina, it is Peronism that has channeled anger provoked by the delirious rise in utility rates (a consumer pays 39 times more for electricity than four years ago). In the October 27 poll, the candidate Alberto Fernandez won largely against the outgoing president, Mauricio Macri, and his austerity policies.
